My last name is pronounced shi-LAD-ee (roughly rhymes with beef patty). I love puns, cacti, eating out, and good punctuation in text messages. I'm a lifelong Latter-day Saint and I'm gay.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Laughable London

My teaching contract ended on January 26th and all of a sudden I had tons of free time and more money in the bank than I'd ever had before. Time+money=loads of fun. At the end of January I over heard my good acquaintance Ezra telling a friend that he wanted to go to Europe and was going to go by himself because he had no one to go with him. Not wanting to miss a chance for adventure I burst into the conversation that I wasn't a part of and said, "You wanna go to Europe? I wanna go! You going 'cause I'll go!" Ten days later I was in Europe. I didn't blog whilst in Europe so I'm going to blog about the amusing things that happened while I was on vacation. This is the first installment.

Our first stop was London. London had just had a huge snow storm the week before we arrived and was very, very cold. I had brought warm clothes with me, but I hadn't packed a hat or gloves. Neither had Ezra. We met up with Ezra's friend Heath and went to a 99 pence store to buy some. Ezra was eying a hat that didn't have a price tag and he said, "Hey Ben, ask the store clerk how much this costs." I grabbed the hat, walked up to the cash register and said, "How much does this hat cost?" The man at the cash register said "99 pence" very smugly and Ezra and Heath burst into laughter. I must admit that it didn't immediately dawn on me what had just happened. Then I realized that I had been tricked into asking how much something costs in a 99 pence store where everything is 99 pence. I reacted to this situation just as any normal person would -- by feeling stupid.

The following day we went to Greenwich park to have a look at the Prime Meridian. I took a picture standing over the Prime Meridian with one foot in the eastern hemisphere and another in the western hemisphere. I even jumped from one hemisphere to the other saying, "I'm in the western hemisphere; I'm in the eastern hemisphere." Being in one hemisphere and then another really isn't too terribly exciting. In fact, I think it's more exciting to be standing on carpet and then standing on linoleum, but for some reason doing that just doesn't warrant taking a picture.

1 comment:

I just want you to know, I have been reading and laughing at your funny posts. (I like the metaphors the best.) I have been giggling so loud that I have kept the two kids in my house awake that should be taking naps. But it was worth it. I was in a grumpy mood and now I'm not!